This invention relates to accessories attachable to photographic apparatus and, more particularly to carrying strap attachments.
Use of carrying straps for photographic apparatus is well-known. Among other things, these straps protect against inadvertent camera dropping, facilitate camera transport and free the user's hands.
One fairly common kind of attachment device for such straps are the eyes or loop devices fixedly anchored on the camera body and to which opposite ends of flexible straps are attached. U.S. Pat. No. 2,172,348 discloses a camera housed in a camera casing with the camera attached to a removable bottom wall of the casing and the carrying strap attached to both the bottom casing wall and casing side wall. Such an approach is unsatisfactory because it requires among other things several components including a rather cumbersome casing and strap relationship. U.S. Pat. No. 2,889,095 discloses a relatively complicated mechanical fixture for attaching carrying straps to cameras. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,922,694 and 3,936,845 disclose detachable carrying strap attachments. These attachments are very satisfactory for the purposes intended, but because of their detachable nature, require several components. Another known approach for securing carrying straps to cameras include riveting the strap ends to the camera. Also, while it is known to attach single flexible covers in covering relation to a recess, such known covers are not made to withstand loading such as the type a camera carrying strap would exert.
In general, known carrying strap attachments for cameras have several components used in the construction thereof which are often cumbersome from the standpoint of assembly or use.
This is significant because in the highly competitive photographic field, it is increasingly important to minimize the costs associated with the production of components used in the products marketed. For instance, if many piece parts are required, such requirement increases relatively significantly the time, labor and costs associated with manufacture and assembly of the products. This is, of course, undesirable.
In assembling cameras, particularly ones of the instant type such as disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 3,979,762, other difficulties arise. These difficulties stem from the fact that the camera's operational components need to be pretested. With previous cameras of this type, pretesting would be accomplished by testing probes contacting battery contacts which were connected to these operational components. Since these contacts are fragile, extreme care must be taken so as not to damage them. Also, with such battery contacts many of the pretesting steps were accomplished while testing probes were inserted into the film pack receiving chamber while the loading door was open. Although pretesting could be accomplished, significant drawbacks appeared. Since the loading door was opened, the spreading system including the processing rollers and gear drive therefor could not be tested. They could be tested only when an actual film pack was inserted in the film pack receiving chamber. It will be appreciated that because of this arrangement actual film units would have to be tested for each camera being produced. This obviously constituted a costly pretesting procedure.